Tiger337

I don't even know what we are arguing about anymore anway, so fine.

Maybe they should hire you as manager. They will never have dumb line-ups anymore.

The best hitter on a team is the one who contributes the most to team runs scored. It could be wOBA or OPS+ or something similar. If you wanted a cumulative stat for the entire season, maybe wRC. If someone is an average fan who doesn't care about analyzing, that is fine. But if someone tells me that the best hitter should bat third, or primarily uses batting average to judge a hitter, then they will get an argument.

So, who was their best hitter last year and where should he have batted?

especially baseball.

I'm old, but not that old! I remember old Kaline, but not young Kaline.

I am pretty sure I've never seen a Tigers rookie who was so good as a hitter at such a young age.

DeJesus is going down to Toledo to remake himself as a pitcher. He's being replaced by a 36-year old pitcher with a 5.79 career ERA.

I see that Hinch has the best hitter hitting 3rd tonight.

I would guess statisticians give Hinch suggestions for line-ups or match-ups based on data. Hinch probably considers them, but makes adjustments based on things that don't necessarily show up in statistics. I don't really know, but that would seem to be the ideal way.

Did you have your subordinate double down on it for you or did you correct your mistake? How did you make that mistake, by the way, i can see someone going in the opposite direction and mistakenly calling it a 5,900% decrease. I would also guess that Trump did not use a spreadsheet!

MAGA math.

Most people don't understand the formula! But yeah, there are other considerations besides an alglorithm and Hinch is not going to tell you what they are.

Tom Tango, et al wrote a book (called "The Book") and there is a chapter on line-ups. It's not based on simply looking at batting average or OBP. It's based on a complex algorithm which estimates the number of runs that a player will contribute to in each batting order position. He didn't say the best hitter bats second on every team. He was saying that all things being equal, it is better for the average team to bat their best hitter second than to have him hitting third. There is nothing special about the number three spot which makes it advatageous to always put you best hitter there. It doesn't alway work for the best hitter to bat second either. It's just that if you are going to pick a spot for your best hitter without considering anything else, the second spot would have the edge. Torres does not always bat second. Sometimes he bats first or third. Hinch has a different line-up every night based on matchups.

I would also say that this kind of line-up is not a bad idea and more defensible than some of the old line-ups where a low obp speedster might leadoff just because he stole a lot of bases.